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Audio Interview with Miguel de Icaza (LugRadio)

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LugRadio has a new interview with Miguel de Icaza in Ogg format. "The latest episode of LugRadio is Monobrow (season 2, episode 9)! Interview with Miguel de Icaza, letters, why your kernel needs compiling, and much, much more! LugRadio now fully supports podcasting! You too can now get LugRadio on the move!" (found on GnomeDesktop.)
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Audio Interview with Miguel de Icaza (LugRadio)

Posted Feb 17, 2005 19:38 UTC (Thu) by scripter (subscriber, #2654) [Link]

I made the mistake of wasting my time listening to this. It's the same drivel we've heard about mono and patent concerns before. Miguel does well with a semi-hostile interview. I won't be listening to LUG radio again anytime soon. I'm glad these radio "commentators" don't represent the entire linux community.

Audio Interview with Miguel de Icaza (LugRadio)

Posted Feb 17, 2005 21:59 UTC (Thu) by LugRadio-Matt (guest, #27961) [Link]

Hey scripter, just to let you know, we're certainly glad you're not representative of the whole Linux world too :) That's not a petty retort, but rather just a reflection of the fact that we love the diversity of the Linux world.

As for the hostility you perceived, I'm afraid it just wasn't there. What we did was a professional interview that asked questions about Mono that many Linux users have.

If you already have all the answers, good for you!

Audio Interview with Miguel de Icaza (LugRadio)

Posted Feb 21, 2005 22:02 UTC (Mon) by massimiliano (subscriber, #3048) [Link]

Of course diversity means richness... but fairly, I found the interview semi-hostile as well.

As a disclaimer, I might be biased... I work on the mono team full time, and I think I know what Miguel thinks. But we did not talk of this interview.

It's OK asking provocative questions, that's part of a professional interview. But a provocative question should anyway have some "ground" to support it.

When you questioned the usefulness (or uniqueness) of the mono applications in the "top 20" list... much of the interview time has been lost just because Miguel tried to explain that the point was moot: since the free software world provides great diversity, probably none of the "top 20" applications was indispensable or unique. So what?

It was almost ridiculous that in the end Miguel just could say "we don't force you to use mono: if you don't like it, don't use it".

Come on, the mono project has many interesting points to show, some are controversial, some less so, but having an interview where the project founder (and leader) is just forced to "defend" his operate that way seems absurd. At least to me.

Nice controversial points are the "intellectual property" ones. Miguel has always been extra clear about them in his writings and also in the mono FAQ, but they did not come out so clear in the interview. This is a pity.

Also, the "skeptical" talking continued after the interview, when Miguel had no chance to answer. And this is bad (or at the very least unfair, because it leaves unanswered questions to the listeners).

I'd like to pick up at least one of these issues: that those twenty-something Novell developers could have done much more for those few mono projects in the "top 20" list simply coding them from scratch with existing technologies, without wasting time on yet another virtual machine.

The answer is terribly, terribly easy: mono is not about those projects. They are just the tip of the iceberg, it's nice pointing at them exactly because they're the tip, they are more visible, and some of them is really cool. But mono is behind many more projects than them.

Let's face it: there are several execution environment out there. You have perl, python, ruby, even plain shell scripts, and soon Parrot...

And you also have java.

And Haskell, ML, SmallTalk, Scheme, TCL, ObjectiveC... not to count old and glorious C and C++.

Each has its strengths and weaknesses, and so has mono. A careful analysis of those strengths and weaknesses would be really interesting. I know It is not feasible in a 10 minutes interview, but one could try to come close!

Of course, just my (biased) two cents...

Ciao, Massi

Audio Interview with Miguel de Icaza (LugRadio)

Posted Feb 18, 2005 10:32 UTC (Fri) by nedrichards (subscriber, #23295) [Link]

You might want to sample some of their others shows before writing them off so easily. Especially their chats with Mark Shuttleworth and Jeff Waugh over the last few weeks. Maybe it's just the perspective of a 20something British male listening to a show made by 20something British males but hey, i like it.

Audio Interview with Miguel de Icaza (LugRadio)

Posted Feb 23, 2005 16:58 UTC (Wed) by drinky76 (guest, #28058) [Link]

I agree with Ned here. I know the LUG Radio guys personally and there was certainly no hostile intent. The intention was to ask some questions that they were personally interested in, to raise some contentious points to see where Miguel stood on them and to air their concerns.

As Ned says, the rest of the shows are in a similarly British twenty-something 'no holds barred' style. As a member of the LUG in LUG Radio, I can assure everyone that LUG Radio is an attempt to recreate the atmosphere and the loud, opinionated discussion style that is common in our LUG meetings. I assure you the intention is not to offend or attack, merely to offer things up for discussion, with no being shy if you disagree. There are no 'shock-jock' tactics at play, this is how these guys talk. Offence not intended, but it's understandable that their style might be too much for some people to bare.

The Jeff Waugh and Mark Shuttleworth interviews are very good btw.

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